Summary: In 2009, with some of the 20th century’s greatest artists as inspiration, Night Kitchen Interactive created an engaging kiosk installation and website, bringing to life the works of Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo and others. Roy De Forest’s colorful work acted as an aesthetic springboard, paving the way for vivid, lively animations. Each animated story reflects an individual artist’s unique approach, creating different extraordinary worlds to be explored. Performance artist Sebastienne Mundheim collaborated with Night Kitchen to craft the voices of two colorful canine characters from Roy De Forest’s work. With the dogs as guides, modeling behaviors of inquiry, this journey through modern masterpieces is reflective, whimsical, and insightful.

These stories and activities excite and inform young museum visitors, inspiring them to contribute their own creative responses to the museum’s website. Targeting children aged 6-10, a rare audience for modern art, this interactive experience engages younger museum visitors and their families with playful narratives and interactive activities. Each reinforces key learning points associated with an individual work and encourages visitors to share their own creative responses in a visitor-contributed gallery on SFMOMA’s website.

In 2011, SFMOMA was interested in adapting the existing Country Dog Gentlemen animations into an HTML5 experience, so visitors with mobile devices that do not support Flash can still partake in the enhanced rich-media experience. We implemented the main menu utilizing “responsive web design” techniques promoted by many of today’s most advanced HTML5 and CSS gurus. We used @media CSS queries in combination with Max and Min device-widths to create a single menu page (and CSS) with break-points that serve up different layouts and different graphics depending on the size and orientation of your device! It was really fun and exciting to be part of bringing this new technique to life while working to improve the museum and online experience for SFMOMA’s younger audiences.

Summary: Launch a clean, clear and easy-to-use eLearning tool for the development and production teams of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical. The Harmony project was an educational tool within a larger, already established initiative, which had musical themed branding. So we used the analogy of the harmony of an orchestra to be associated with the hopeful development and production process of J&J bringing innovative pharmaceutical products to market. It was developed in Flash, with a welcome video, a Rovion-style guide walking the user through all 10 stages, an interactive development flow chart, a master list of deliverables & reference documents, and an acronym/definition list. The Harmony project was very well received by J&J, and at a time when entire departments were being shuttered because of the global recession, our group was experiencing growth with new projects.

Summary: Create a promotional video for the Council for the Advancement of Public Schools (CAPS). This 3-5 minute video needed to illustrate all the positive public relations work that had been done in 2008 by the CAPS organization, while also engaging potential new supports to the cause of supporting our public schools. The biggest challenge with this project was the lack of video assets. Most of what was supplied were still photography and newspaper clippings. We did however have a previously edited broadcast quality commercial we made earlier in the year, and a small budget for voice-over talent. (Generously donated at a greatly reduced rate to help support the cause.) In the end, the video was very well received by the client, and we got some great feedback from them about its reception by their supporters. Everyone involved considered the project a success.

Summary: Teach children how much sleep they need in a fun and engaging way. (What kids haven’t been preached to on this topic by parents or other adults when bed time rolls around?) Animals are a proven hook for our target age group of 5- to 10-year-old boys and girls. We used illustration, animation, funny voice talent and interactivity to engage the audience. Actionscripting was used to keep score during the games 10 question screens, with a congratulations at the end that loops the user back in for another try or sends them off for additional reading material. Overall, and very popular and successful interactive piece for KidsHealth.org. So much so that it was also featured in GD USA Magazine’s 2005 annual.